The Storm of War: A New History of the Second World War

I haven't gotten to the part of this book where he talks about the far East yet so I can't speak to that, but the first half, which focuses, obviously, on Germany and Russia is truly remarkable. What Andrew Roberts understands that I have not found in any other history of WWII (and I've read more than my share, having been obsessed since childhood, and even more obsessed since learning Russian) is the paradox at the center of the conflict. As he says:

At the heart of the Second World War lies a giant and abiding paradox: although the western war was fought in defense of civilization and democracy, and although it needed to be fought and had to be won, the chief victor was a dictator who was as psychologically warped and capable of evil as Adolf Hitler himself. (169)

Yalta Conference: Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin

If you study Russia and dig beneath the standard heroic narratives of how the Russians won WWII, this is very much what you find. The West couldn't have won the war without Stalin, but Stalin used the war as yet another excuse to more or less exterminate millions of his people--from those he starved in the countryside, to those who became essentially "interchangeable parts" in the Russian war machine. Roberts is clear on this: the Russians were more effective than the Germans not because they were better-trained or better-equipped but because there were so goddamn many of them--when one died there was always another one waiting to replace him. (While reading this I couldn't help drawing parallels to China today.) Moreover, the Russians were commanded not only to fight to the death, regardless of the circumstances, they also knew that their families' lives depended on their doing so. Deserters would not have a family to return to, for the NKVD (precursor of the KGB) murdered the families of deserters without compunction.

Roberts also has an important insight into Hitler's nature. It is clear that in his mind Hitler was not smart (certainly not as smart as he thought he was)--he made unforgivable military miscalculations that potentially cost him the entire war--but merely a charismatic leader and ideologue who compelled people to follow him though drama, manipulation, and fear. Moreover, the war that he sought, and the war that he got, "was the world's first wholly politically ideological war . . . [and] that was the primary reason why the Nazis lost it." (5) If Hitler had waged a war based on reason, rather than one based on ideology (I'm not suggesting he could have been reasonable, just that he could have followed a reasonable military trajectory), he wouldn't have been so convinced of the subhuman nature of the Slavic races or the ease with which they could be conquered and exterminated, and he might have thought twice about opening a war on two fronts simultaneously, one of which had proved too vast and too cold for would-be conquerors going back to Napoleon. Roberts says:

Hitler was also impelled to invade Russia by each of the three major strands in his political credo. As Ian Kershaw points out, the Fuhrer had 'a small number of basic, unchanging ideas that provided his inner driving-force.' Hitler's self-reinforcing Weltanshauung (world-view) was based on the need for Germany to dominate Europe, win Lebensraum for herself and come to a final reckoning with the Jews. These views never altered or moderated, and stayed central to his thinking from the 1920s to his death two decades later. All three could be achieved by an invasion of Russia, and none could be achieved without one. (124)

Sometime this summer I  found myself in an argument--happily, I forget why--with someone who was trying to tell me that the Germans only knew what Hitler intended to do "after the fact." I remember suggesting that one need only read Mein Kampf to have known exactly what he was up to. Roberts supports my point. Again and again he explains how Hitler's ideologies and plans were established in the '20s and remained unchanged, even when militarily they did not serve his purpose. This is the very reason he was as dangerous as he was, but it is also, ironically, the reason why he could be defeated. One shudders to think what could have happened had he not allowed his grotesque ideology to influence, and weaken, his military strategy.